


evergreen

by perennial



Category: Peter Pan & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Post-Canon, no one escapes a redemption arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-11 16:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13528470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennial/pseuds/perennial
Summary: Wendy stays in Neverland.





	1. Chapter 1

Wendy stays.

She does not return to her grieving parents. She does not bring her brothers home. She does not lead the lost boys to the lives of convention waiting for them in London.

She stays in the insular world of the island, and the island, in turn, reaches up and absorbs her into its blazing lifeblood. She learns all the layers of Neverland: its deep lagoons and choppy seas, its berry patches and thickets of thorns. She learns to recognize varieties of light: the glow of fairy dances, the campfires of braves on the hunt, the lantern-cast of pirates up to no good.

She stays, and suddenly all the pretending becomes reality. She is mother to her brothers, mother to the lost boys, mother to Peter. It falls to her to see they are fed, to sing them to sleep, to kiss their bruises and stitch up their cuts. (There is no mother for Wendy, but she is too busy to wonder why.)

She runs along the trails beneath the tall evergreens. The soft pink pads of her feet turn brown and hard. She pins up her hair with silver-blue feathers. Her lengthening shadow dances in the sunlight thrown across her path; she plummets through cloud-mountains with only fairy dust for a parachute. She lives with pine sap on her fingers, honey in the corners of her mouth, star patterns reflected in the aqueous humor of her eyes.

She forgets London. She forgets the brick house with the wide window that let Peter in and ushered the Darlings out. She forgets Nana. She forgets her parents. It takes some time for all of it to leak from her mind, a sum of years—but eventually her previous life is little more than a dream.

She stays, and thrives, and grows.

—

Hook opens his eyes to friendly brown ones. Thick white brows lift and a voice says: "Alright, son? Had quite a time of it, haven't you?"

The eyes move out of his field of vision and are replaced by tile floors and tall gray walls. The mattress beneath him is hard; the sheets are loud with starch.

He feels as though knifeblades are shredding his veins. Every cell in his body burns with invisible fire.

"Where am I?" says the mangled pirate captain, though it's quite obvious he's in a hospital. Half his body is wrapped in white gauze, which covers lacerations they do not let him look at for weeks.

"You lost a lot of blood before they found you. Remember anything?"

"I fell," he says.

—

After Hook dies the pirates hold a conference. They have mutinied too many times to tally, but since the tool which gave Hook's name its fame was ideal for putting down rebellions, they have never truly been without a leader. After a satisfactory amount of shouting is done and the rum is gone, they go to the person most qualified for the job.

"I'll do it," says a cautious Red-handed Jack, once known as John Darling, "but there are to be some ground rules. We shall be respectful subjects of the king. We are to be _noble_ pirates. Agreed?"

They put it to a vote. Everyone cheats and casts two ballots, some three. John wins by a unanimous landslide. His first act of leadership is to punish the crew for cheating by making them clean the _Jolly Roger_ from stem to stern. Everyone is tremendously pleased with the result and they yell at each other for days to stop tracking mud across the deck.

—

For five days the pirate captain lies in the hospital bed and believes with every beat of his black heart that he is on the threshold of hell. When the sixth day dawns, they tell him he will remain in this world a good while longer, after all; and he learns for the second time that the pain of healing can be worse than the first pain of a wound inflicted.

He lives in the hospital for eight months. His bed is in the main men's ward. The sick and wounded crowd the air with hacking coughs and groans of pain. He brandishes his hook and offers to put them out of their misery. None accept his offer, though there are some he heartily wishes would.

Without meaning to he comes to know the names and ailments of his fellow sufferers. For lack of anything else to do he listens when the doctors and nurses gather at each bedside to discuss a patient's progress or perform necessary procedures. He learns: what a slow heart rate means, or a fast one; how to clean and dress a wound; the results of ingesting baking soda; signs of sepsis, signs of anemia, signs of liver failure, signs of chlamydia, signs of ulcers, signs of hemorrhaging.

"You'll survive," he tells the new patient in the bed next to his, in tones generally used to bestow unfortunate news. "It's only an esophageal abscess. Nothing to get excited over."

Bedbound, his inability to escape from hearing range means that he also learns about his neighbors' families and occupations and inane hobbies. He can't get away from their songs or their jokes or their raucous, contagious laughter. He has to listen while they encourage each other to do their exercises or coach each other through the writing of letters to sweethearts or list all the reasons why life as a man with one leg is one to be envied. He can't get away from the cries of their nightmares or the sobs of men whose agony is so great they do not care who hears.

Eventually he picks up enough knowledge to advise the nurses, to their joy and gratitude. He already knows the human anatomy fairly well from years of disemboweling it, and on the night when the entire hospital staff is engaged with treating a tenement building's-worth of burn victims, it is Hook who slices open the stitches of a wardmate's festering abdominal incision and fishes out the fragment of musket ball still within. In answer to the others' surprise at this show of concern, he retorts: "He's the only one of you lot worth his salt at chess."

Uncomfortable seeds of sympathy start to take root in his soul. Tiny ones, but like a grain of sand in a clam, he can feel them. They make him call the nurse over to give morphine to his silently weeping neighbor. They make him stare at the block of sunlight on the wall and think of all the lives he ended without a thought for what it meant.

—

Ivy grows over Wendy's little house like many long fingers; after a while the impression given is that the earth is reaching up to pull the house into itself.

She makes her clothes from leaves and bark and living moss and vines, modeling herself after the fairies, to their disgust. Violets and buttercups bloom in the mossy layers. She fashions belts of peonies and wild roses and weaves lilies and daisies through her hair. Ivy twines around her arms and legs. The sun gets hold of her hair and polishes it penny-bright.

Peter teaches her the language of butterflies and fireflies. No linguist, Peter; he learned from the fairies, who are sorry teachers, and his accent is grating; but Wendy is a scholar at heart and is able to fill in the gaps on her own. She coaxes the insects into sitting above her ear or resting on her shoulder: the universe's most exotic brooches and hairpins, sipping from honeysuckle. She greets twilight with fireflies flashing at her neck and wrists. She is much like her house, is Wendy: a bit of escapist earth, dancing across the crust with her face to the sun, scattering colors wherever she roams.

—

Hook has family among the landed gentry. He has every intention of revealing himself to them as soon as his medical school debt becomes too crippling a burden to bear. Not yet, though. Not until he's found steady footing; created a life for himself in the wilds of London; after the business of reshaping his soul is complete.

He studies, and starves, and advances.

—

Peter appears with the dawn and says: "How many adventures shall we have today, Wendy?"

All of them, of course.

It is Peter and Wendy who discover the pirates' cache; Peter and Wendy who hook a rope to a whale's tail and go for a waterlogged ride around the island; Peter and Wendy who venture deep enough into the island's caves to find the exploding gems. It is Peter and Wendy who lead the lost boys in battle against Tiger Lily's braves and Red-handed Jack's crew; Peter and Wendy who steal the most cantankerous hippo's tooth right out of his mouth; Peter and Wendy who go rappelling through the pole trees using pythons for rope; Peter and Wendy who get closer to the volcano's caldera than anyone else.

Wendy does away with Peter's thinning of the ranks. She is far too fond of the lost boys to give up even one, especially after all the time she put into training them to wash their hands before supper, and she won't let him cull them the way he did those who grew before.

(Fond, is she! So had he been, certainly, but you hadn't heard him complaining, had you! And then they quarrel, and Wendy wins.)

That is not to say he doesn't try. He will turn sly in the height of battle and attempt to insert a dagger into the ribs of a twin, or push Nibs into the mermaids' lagoon when no one is looking. But no permanent damage is done, and in the times when there might be a chance of it, Peter has a last minute change of heart—or catches Wendy's eye—and will haul the drowner out of the churning waters or direct the blade into a shoulder.

(If asked, Wendy will loyally say that Peter is her favorite, but truthfully she can get along nicely for days with only her wolf for company; and if she were to lose her wolf she would be far more bereft than if she were to lose one of the boys. That is not to say she would not be bereft in both cases, only that in the case of the wolf it would be more.)

It is Peter who teaches Wendy how to take a life: first beasts, then men. It is Peter who teaches her the words to fairy songs and how to navigate the fairy roads. From him she learns how to sleep in the sky and paint her face with blood when on the hunt. It is Peter who turns Wendy nearly feral—never as bloodthirsty as he would like, and never enough to corrupt her grammar… but nearly.

At night the boys make great bonfires and dance around them to songs of their own making, their skewed shadows thrown into grotesque relief across the trees, purple jam smeared on their faces. They pound on drums and howl at the moon and keep all the fairies awake.

—

Hook learns of the existence of a certain Mr. and Mrs. Darling from the offhand conversation of the acquaintance of a friend. _Poor things, lost all their children at once, never saw them again. A successful man, George Darling, but they refuse to leave Bloomsbury in case their children come looking for home._

It takes Hook three years to go to No. 14 and tell its inhabitants what he knows. They listen, their hearts slowly moving into their eyes, wide and gasping with hope. They plead: return to Neverland. Bring back their children.

He tells the truth. "I'm terribly sorry." He can hardly stand to look directly at them. "I don't remember the way."

—

Tiger Lily has eyes like living coals. Black as the ocean at night, bright and hot as fire: this is the gaze she turns on the young woman who has walked into their camp with wary feet, pricked ears, and sharp knives in her belt.

Wendy solemnly wonders if the tribe is accepting new members. Her copper hair is wild and feather-strewn. Her cheeks are sunburnt and her nose is freckled. Blood and dirt outline her nail beds.

Their rivalry is long over. Both woke one morning to the realization that they were leaving Peter behind and he did not care to catch up. They grieved all day and woke the next to the realization that they no longer minded. With that, their long-standing mutual respect shed its outer skin of jealousy. Friendly enmity, now permitted to exist, has flourished. The whole arrangement is such a success that once a year the little house will host a banquet honoring the chieftess and her braves, and once a year Tiger Lily's tipi will host the lost boys and their mother.

Tiger Lily appraises her visitor. "You have shed our blood," she says, "many times over."

Wendy's chin is level and her eyes are watchful.

Tiger Lily says, "Will you shed as much blood for me?"

Wendy trades her moss and violets for soft leather and war paint. The butterflies make way for delicate tattoos: stories she carries for all to see. From a distance they look like constellations.

—

Hook climbs onto the roof of the boarding house and traces the sky as though mapping out a route home. Above him shine the stars he once knew as well as the way his tongue fits in his mouth. Every so often he forgets and starts on the wrong side; the patterns are backwards here.

He wonders what waits on the other side of the horizon. He wonders (a much smaller thought, kept hidden behind the others) if this place he's found himself might in fact be that destination.

—

Perhaps it is not surprising that of all three Darlings, Michael knows Peter best. It is Michael who, having been brought in when still quite young, runs alongside Peter for more years than Wendy and John combined, until they are so familiar with each other's methods and mannerisms that they hardly need speech to communicate; all it takes is a nod or a blink.

It is Michael who takes over as lieutenant when Wendy defects. Peter didn't stop collecting new lost boys when Wendy made it law that the elder ones must be permitted to live; the house under the ground now boasts over twenty inhabitants. They answer to Michael when they feel like it; they answer to Peter without hesitation. Everyone is content with the order of things.

For this reason, Michael is the most feral of all the Darlings, to the point where he is so attuned to the island that it seems he has grown right out of the dirt and moss. Wendy sees him whenever the lost boys wage war against Tiger Lily's warriors. He grins at her across the battlefield, a flash of teeth in the clay streaked across his face.

The elder boys no longer need her to patch up their scratches and cuts. They can feed themselves and sometimes they remember to bathe. She still finds them at her elbow, nudging her for story or a song or a mussing of their hair. They run through the camp so often that Tiger Lily has remarked more than once that they are de facto members of the tribe; Wendy's tipi is always overflowing with four or five of them.

This is where most of them are on the morning Michael and Peter come looking for her. Wendy is sharpening arrowheads against a rock; Nibs and Slightly are playing a game with pebbles, arguing loudly when they aren't laughing. The twins are weaving a net with which to catch a mermaid, which should provide the lagoon some amusement. Tootles is lazily playing the pennywhistle.

Curly has been paying a visit to the _Jolly Roger_  and appears to have been found first, as both he and John trail behind Peter. Wendy looks up at their shouted greetings and waves in welcome to the newcomers.

Michael's summer-blue eyes look down at her. He shades them with his hand. Peter smiles up at her, his small teeth cutting through his dark face like a split coconut, his eyes black and bright. They are showing the signs of having gotten an idea.

"We want to play Wendy-bird," Michael tells her. The old crew, hearing this, leap to their feet and alarm the neighbors with their shouts of enthusiasm.

They go to the edge of the first star's light and looks out into the wide spangled galaxy. The island floats below them in a pool of blue; its multitudinous rainbows wreath it like ribbons.

Wendy-bird involves hiding behind cloudbanks and hurling boulders and arrows at each other. The rocks must be lugged up to the clouds and caught quickly before they fall too far, or else the player will have to go all the way back to the boulder pile to retrieve a replacement and carry it up to the playing field again (the local birds, if prevailed upon for assistance, only answer with looks of scorn).

Dodging arrows is a rather tricky thing to do when one's attention is on fixed on catching an armful of boulder, so it is to be expected that from time to time there are injuries.

Fittingly, the unfortunate, unintentional culprit is Tootles.

"Wendy!" comes an alarmed chorus.

She turns—too late.

—

Hook is reviewing a patient's chart when he overhears the nurses.

"Poor dear. Can't remember a thing. Just talks about an island and asks for Peter." Her voice drops to a whisper. "And _tattoos_ , all over, I've never seen the like."

Hook walks from his desk into the corridor without any awareness of his limbs moving. "Nurse Green." He hears a tremor in his voice and pauses before speaking again. "The patient you're discussing. What is their name?"

"She doesn't know her surname, sir, says she doesn't have one. But her given name is Wendy."

—

She opens her eyes to piercing blue ones. A man in a white coat sits in the chair beside her bed. He says: "Hello, Wendy. Do you know who I am?"

She studies him. His hair is dark and short. There are scars on his neck and a deep one on his cheek; lines branch out from around his eyes but the rest of his face is smooth. His tie is knotted with evident precision, a stark contrast to the tangle of black rubber and shining metal jammed into the front pocket of his coat. He has a prosthetic hand covered with dents and scratches that indicate many years in the wearing.

"No," she finally answers. "I don't remember much about this place."

"You are remembering it? London?"

"As a word. The place I lived—before. Who are you, then?"

"A friend." He pauses. "A friend of your parents."

"I haven't any such things."

"You do, as it happens. I'd like to bring them here, if you'll allow it."

Wendy has forgotten many things but she understands mothering. And she may be feral but she is kind, and her imagination has undergone excellent training in what it might be like to lose one of her own children. The result is a surge of compassion for these parents from London-before. She is not sure how to be a daughter, but she thinks it must be the opposite of a mother, and she is certainly capable of imagining _that_. So she says, "Of course you may," cautiously.

"Their names are George and Mary. George and Mary Darling; your surname is Darling." He looks at her expectantly. "Does that help you remember?"

"No." She frowns in thought. "They are John's parents as well, aren't they?"

"Indeed."

"And—Curly's?"

"Michael's."

"Yes, Michael's… And Slightly's?"

"No, only the three of you."

"And no wonder. Michael's quite enough trouble to make one wish one had no children at all."

"Your brothers are living? They are well?"

"Certainly." She considers him. "Are you a medicine man?"

"No. But I am a kind of healer, or try to be."

She says shrewdly: "You've been there, haven't you? Neverland."

"Yes. It was a long time ago."

"Why did you leave?"

His mouth opens to answer, then closes, not finding the words. He shakes his head ever so slightly and in a flash she understands.

"You didn't leave. You got lost." Her chest hollows out and floods with sympathy, sorrow, grief for him. "And never found your way back?"

He looks at her with an expression she cannot interpret.

A nurse approaches and says: "Sir? The amputee in Ward 3—"

"Of course. Be there straightaway." He tells Wendy, "I'll look in on you later. Can I do anything for you in the meantime? Have you had supper? Are you warm enough?"

She settles back in her pillow. "Are the stars here the same?"

He smiles in a way that tells her he once knew the Neverland stars—as well as she does, perhaps. "Yes. Backwards, but yes."

Peace sighs through her heart at these words: perhaps home is not so far away as it seems; it is close enough to touch with her eyes.

She looks at the window. "Will you move the cloth?"

The panels meet in the middle and he pulls them both back at the same time. His prosthetic hand was built with clock-like mechanisms that allow his false fingers some limited movement, but they are better suited for surgical tools; he has some trouble grasping the curtain. The sight stirs something in her memory.

"You'd be better off with a hook," she tells him, and they both freeze.

Dawn over Neverland – red blood dripping off a silver curve – a shadow in the little house – long black curls tumbling forward when he bowed – a bottle of poison – a bottle of medicine – sewing shadows – her mother's eau de toilette – her father's tweed suits – John's tin soldier set – Michael jumping on the bed until tumbling off – her summer nightgowns – stories by the window – cricketsong in the back garden – moonlight on the cobbled streets of London.

" _You_ ," she says.

He does not move; he does not appear to breathe.

Her eyes search his. She remembers those eyes now, merciless and dangerous as the open ocean. Something in them is missing, or has been added.

Her brow furrows in confusion. "You're a friend of my parents?"


	2. Chapter 2

Wendy re-learns.

How to climb stairs and to stay out of the path of lorries and that life is dictated by ticking minute-hands. How to walk in white kid boots and to close the windows when the fog rolls in and that she likes her tea with sugar and lemon.

She learns.

How to hold a parasol and lace a corset and only believe half of what is printed in the newspapers. How to walk serenely and conduct weightless conversation at dinner parties. To never let a single hair fall into disarray. The odd feel of her skin when she bathes daily.

Her arrows are confiscated. Stabbing is forbidden; even threats are frowned upon. Giving anyone a black eye is bad form, as is running, and wearing vine belts, and breathing freely. Meat is bought from the butcher, not hunted in the park and carried home slung over one's shoulder. Sitting on the roof of the house and watching the passerby is not the done thing, though no one can tell her exactly why.

Her parents watch her with unveiled adoration. They look at her as though they are living in a dream and are afraid to wake up. She makes a genuine effort to appear happy for their sake. They seem so badly to want her to be happy.

She has no interest in London society; her parents' friends and neighbors are more interested in exclaiming over the miracle of her escape from her captors (Americans, they assume, due to her lack of good English manners) than explaining the things she is truly interested in, such as how streetlamps operate and what makes a motor carriage move and where the fog comes from.

Instead she glories in books. She drinks in one after another, curled up in the wide library window seat to absorb as much sunshine as can break through the cloud barricade. Sometimes she falls into an encyclopedia and doesn't climb out for a day or two, but most of her attention is given to stories: fairy tales and gothic romances and western adventures. "The boys will love this," she tells Hook, whose face is becoming a familiar sight at No. 14; "I had to start inventing stories ages ago and they're tired of my regular characters."

At night she sits by the window and watches the backwards stars slide through the sky. There is no sign of a stray shadow or a glow that might be mistaken for an oversized firefly.

She absorbs, and suffocates, and waits.

—

The senior Darlings, anxious to draw their  
daughter into London life, concoct a plan.  
Hook will be her tutor, they announce.

Wendy looks at the good doctor dubiously.  
He gives her a friendly grin in return. "Not  
in maths and medicine. Social niceties, Miss  
Darling, of which I possess many and you  
possess none."

George Darling is prepared to take offense  
on behalf of his daughter, but she merely  
laughs: "The crocodile story at Mrs. Vise's  
supper was the limit, I suppose."

"And the disastrous waltz at the Callenders',"  
her new tutor confirms. "Those abominable  
Americans and their lack of propriety."

"I don't know why I need bother," she  
says. "It isn't as though I'm staying."

The table goes silent.

Hook finally says: "When?"

"As soon as Peter finds me. I'm certain he's  
somewhere in the city, searching, only he  
can't remember the house. He has an awful  
memory; and it won't help that every row is  
identical. I hope he doesn't forget a fairy, or  
at very least some dust; flying is the only  
way to get home."

Her mother exclaims,  
"But this is your home!"

It is no use. They cannot hold  
her. She lost her cage long ago.

"I won't permit it, Wendy," her father starts  
to say, but his heart climbs up into his  
throat before he can manage more than I.

(I won't survive it, Wendy, my own beloved  
girl, the first part of my heart to live outside  
my body; it only just started beating again.  
Don't make me look at your mother every  
morning and evening over this empty table,  
my chest is collapsing inward, oh my poor  
Mary, it is like dying twice.)

—

Wendy holds a box of throwing knives for Hook while he takes his turn at target practice. Her parents sit at the table on the flagstone patio some feet away; they clutch cups of tea. The sun has won the hour's battle for the sky and light falls down on the garden in a flood that sets even the dullest shrubs alight.

"There must be a man," a distraught Mary Darling tells her husband. "Waiting for her in that place. That's why she wants to go back so badly."

"Three, in fact," says Wendy. "Their names are John and Michael and Peter. That's two in a row you missed," she tells Hook.

"I'm aware," he says curtly, and crosses the garden to retrieve the knives. He returns to her side and takes the box from her.

Wendy adjusts her footing, aims, and throws; the knife hits the knothole dead center. Again and again and again she throws, dispatching her imaginary victim each time. Her mother watches with uncertain, curious eyes.

"Will you come with us?" Wendy asks Hook, who is standing pale and silent at her side.

He says hoarsely, "I don't know the way."

"Peter will lead us, of course."

"Us?" says Mary Darling.

"Don't fret, Mother, it's very easy: just think happy thoughts. Will you need to warn Liza before we go?"

"Go?" says George Darling.

Wendy realizes she might have made a few too many assumptions. "I thought you would want to see Michael and John. And perhaps..." she hesitates, fumbling with her words, "perhaps— stay."

They stare.

"You'll have a cottage by the mermaid's lagoon, Mother, just think of it. And Father, wait until you see the court of law John created, it's like watching swordplay with words."

She has not struck true and she knows it. The senior Darlings are not looking for adventure: their home here shouts of permanence and comfort. She turns back to Hook and the throwing knives.

Her parents look at each other, shock at the surface of their eyes, but further down a seed has been planted.

—

Wendy answers the door before Liza can.

"Would you like to join me in the park?" says James Hook, looking up at her from the bottom step. Liza, lurking in the hall, hands Wendy her parasol.

It rained during the morning; the path is still wet and water drips from every leaf and lamppost, but the day is mild. Wendy fiddles with a hole in the lace eyelet of her dress.

"You haven't asked me anything about Neverland. Not a single question."

He glances at her from under the black brim of his hat. She wonders briefly how he coped with his own homesickness without anyone to reminisce with.

"Very well. Is the old _Jolly Roger_ still afloat?"

"Most certainly. John was chosen as captain following your departure from the post."

Hook gives a triumphant shout of laughter. "I could see the pirate in him even when a boy. Is Michael his first mate?"

She tells him Michael stayed with Peter's gang and he smiles. "Peter Pan," he says, "How is Pan?" as one might when reminded of a long-ago friend one hasn't seen in a very long time.

"Peter is fine," answers Wendy, suspicious.

"I owe Pan a debt," he tells her. "He's the reason I've been here for the last ten years instead of sailing around that island terrorizing you lot."

This ought to have warned Wendy, but she is distracted and only pays heed to her curiosity. "You don't hold it against him?"

"He was doing his job: conquer the villain."

She studies the shy, tightly-furled leaves above their heads and says thoughtfully, "I'm rather glad you didn't die."

"Charitable of you."

She shakes her parasol at him. "None of your sarcasm, sir. I am sincere."

"You're glad I changed, not that I didn't die. What if I had found a way to return to Neverland and never decided to use my affinity for cutting people up for the good of mankind?"

"Are you truly happy here?"

"Yes."

"That was what I wanted for you, even back then: for you to be happy. I'm glad you lived long enough to know happiness."

"Wen—Miss Darling," he says, and she waits for him to ask the questions that have been lingering behind his teeth for weeks now ( _how much does she remember, is she angry, is he forgiven?_ ) but instead he compliments her dress, as though she would have chosen to wear something that catches around her ankles so, even if it is a pretty thing.

She says, "Shall we race across this field?"

He catches her by the crook of her elbow before he speaks, as though restraining an overeager racehorse from a false start out the gate. "Indeed I would, now you mention it; but it's not the done thing."

Misery sweeps up from her lungs into her throat. She stares at the park lawn, standing silent and motionless. Hook, who is still holding Wendy's elbow, withdraws his hand slowly.

"London says you may not, so you won't," she says. "The James Hook I knew did as he pleased."

"Are you goading me, Miss Darling?"

A glow in the depths of her eyes: "Is it working?"

"It rather is, yes." He looks her up and down, squinting. "You're going to race in that corset?"

She beholds him with scorn. "I've raced in far worse circumstances than mild suffocation."

"Very well. To the treeline?" She tucks the hem of her dress level with her knees. They place their feet and he says _go_. Arms pumping, they fly neck and neck across the field. His legs are longer and he doesn't give a chivalric inch but she has always been fast as the wind and she is determined to win.

She has lost track of how long it has been since she felt like this: the rush of adrenaline, the eagerness of her muscles to move, the burn when she pushes them to move faster, the air making her eyes water, her ears deaf to everything but her pounding feet and pounding heart.

They tie for first. It takes a moment for them to catch their breath, Hook from lack of practice, Wendy from the constriction around her lungs. A tie is a loss by Neverland standards but she is smiling wide despite it.

He looks up at her from where he stands with his hands on his knees, chest heaving. "You must miss it badly."

She does. She misses her children. She misses her trees and her dirt and her campfires and stars in their correct pattern. She does not know how much longer she can bear the lostness that is London.

He looks away, into the bushes and trees. "There are fairies in this park, or so they say."

She lights up. "Let's find them; they can tell Peter my whereabouts."

He nods and shows her a smile and they go back to where they left their hats and her parasol. It takes them an hour to find fairy tracks and another hour to give up the search. Wendy is forced to leave them a note in the hope someone has taught the Kensington fairies how to read.

—

"Good night, my love," says her mother.

Wendy lifts her head, blinking the way one  
does when pulled from the depths of a book,  
and smiles in response. Mary lays a light hand  
on her daughter's hair and smoothes it away  
from her eyes, then bends to kiss her forehead.

"There's oil in the cupboard if you need more."  
Wendy nods; the oil lamp by her head flickers  
in commiseration. The lady of the house glides  
out of the room into the darkness of the hall,  
and Wendy's mouth turns up in an absent  
smile as she returns to her book.

Mary Darling goes upstairs to her husband  
and says: "We're going with her."

—

They shove the furniture to the perimeter of the library and turn on the gramophone. As the notes of Offenbach's _Barcarolle_ thread through the room, Wendy informs her tutor that she knows much livelier dances than _this_.

"You'll need to know how to waltz for Mrs. Hawkes-Brimble's party on Saturday. Now, from the top." He holds out his hands. "Don't look at your feet."

Her eyes are level with his chin. She can smell the hospital on him, mixed with his aftershave and the remains of the mouthful of scotch he swallowed before they started. He slides his hand around to the small of her back and all her senses jump to full awareness.

It isn't as though she has never touched another human before. _This_ , though. To feel the physical evidence of the life that knits all his blood and bones and muscles into a cohesive whole, a whole that is warm and breathing, that is strong and firm and lithe, that is _him_ —it rushes on her and makes her breath come short, weakens the tendons in her knees and elbows, sets a frisson in her every muscle.

He is counting steps in her ear. She lifts her eyes to his. He trails off.

She looks at his firm mouth, looks at his eyes like the summer sky.

She cannot help hesitating.

The something she saw in his eyes is instantly shuttered. Wendy will watch for its return for the remainder of the dance lesson, to no avail.

"From the top," says the doctor.

—

"Careful what you teach them," Hook tells her. He dumps handfuls of chopped carrots into the soup tureen.

"Teach?" She is all innocence, sitting on a stool in the shed he's put up in a dirty slum street. It is raining outside but the aroma of food will draw a crowd, no matter how wet the weather.

"I know you're teaching them fighting techniques. We don't need street wars led by five-year-olds on top of everything else wrong in this city, Miss Darling."

"I'm simply showing them how to defend themselves. And only the littlest; no one else is watching out for them."

"Yes, self-defense and they're only five. Until the day they're ten and they've knifed a baker because they want the bread in his window, or a man like your father because they want his wallet. Violence is different here than in Neverland, Wendy. It uses up more of one's soul."

"They're so small," she pleads.

"Then send them to school."

"Prison!" she asserts.

"School is where they learn to read," he reminds her.

"Nobody needs a school for _that_."

Together they drop handfuls of potato wedges and cabbage into the pot. Hook adds salt, pepper, and dried herbs. Heat rises off the liquid surface in misty undulations like miniature ghosts.

She says, "You like it here. You like London."

"And you don't."

"Everything is gray. Don't you miss having green things around you?"

His life has always been red. "I've never given it much thought."

"Spoken like a true Londoner," she smiles, albeit wanly.

"It's barely spring yet," he says. "The colors will come."

"I'll have to take your word for it, I suppose."

He winks at her. "Don't you trust me?" he says, and pretends it isn't a real question.

She hands out bowls from under the shelter of the canvas he has stretched above the patch of the cobblestones beside the shed. Urchins creep up from alleys and gutters: all filthy, many coughing, some bleeding. They clutch their bowls and inhale their food and when they are on their second bowl and eating more slowly, he goes to each one and crouches before them and listens to their insides with his stethoscope and cleans up their cuts and sometimes administers stitches. Some regard him in fear, and to these he speaks low and kind, knowing just what to ask to calm them and keep them from spooking and running off; but most know him well by now, and they offer up their reports freely, often swapping jokes with him, tattling on mutual acquaintances, trying to sway his favor to their side of their street fights, and critiquing his medical services ("Needle's too sharp by half, guv").

The crowd trickles away when the soup runs out. The rain has stopped, but Hook and Wendy opt to clean dishes and apparatus inside the drier shelter of the shed.

She dumps out the soapy water, smiling. "Who'd have thought. Captain Hook, scourge of the high seas, checking foreheads for fever."

"You're late to the table, Miss Darling. Everyone else is long since accustomed to the notion."

She says, "You really do love it, don't you? This city and all it entails."

"Guilty as charged. Hardest life yet, but I think—I do think, Miss Darling, I like this one best."

She muses. "Third life for you, is it? And how many more do you plan to live?"

"Why, as many as I please, of course."

"What shall you be next? A gladiator?"

"Not if I can help it. Take note, o daughter of Neverland: it's far more rewarding to save lives than it is to end them. I give my patients an extra bit of life, send them back into the world to live out their chance."

"Like a mother."

"Not the precise term I would use; but yes, perhaps."

Her hands stop their work. "You aren't coming with us."

He wipes his knives carefully, looking down at them so that his face is hidden from her. "I do good work here. There are so few hands as it is."

Her voice is strangled. "Now is not the time for your terrible puns."

He watches her face as she searches for words of protest, of persuasion, then as she realizes they will be as effective as the sea beating against a cliff.

"The park," she says quietly. "You've been giving me clues all along."

"There's nothing for me in Neverland, Wendy. All I left behind in that life was death. Here, I have a chance to make up for some of what I've done. Don't you see?"

"You're going to spend the rest of your life paying penance? What peace can you find in that? What about grace? What about forgiveness?"

When she is impassioned her face flushes and her eyes turn bright and determined. She has tucked five tiny daffodils and two feathers into the curls pinned up at the back of her head. Her lace sleeves are pushed up above her elbows and her hair falls in her eyes.

"Your parents will like Neverland," he says absently. "I'll enjoy picturing all of you in a little house by the lagoon."

She reaches for him, holds his wrist with both her hands. "Come with us," she pleads.

"What for, Wendy?"

"For them. Bring them with us." She means the ruffians. "Bring them to Neverland. It's a better life than this one!"

"No. No, they're going to make better lives for themselves, for each other. They'll make this a better world. We need them here."

He hears footsteps outside, approaching at a run. A dirt-streaked face pokes into the shed. "Trouble coming," it tells them.

Hook grabs his black bag and his pistol and runs out to the street. Two ragged youths are making their way through the puddles toward them, supporting a third figure between their shoulders.

They lay him on one of the benches under the dripping tarp. His shoulder is a mess of red. "Hold him down," Hook tells the others. "This is going to hurt," he tells the youth.

"They're right behind us," says one of his companions.

Hook glances at Wendy. She reaches over and takes his pistol.

When the street gang rounds the corner they are met with a swishing sound and suddenly two knives are embedded in the windowsill to their right.

"I didn't have to miss," calls Wendy. "It's your choice where the next five go." She raises the pistol in one hand and throwing knife in another, and waits.

The gang looks wary, then at a sign from their leader, all retreat.

Wendy returns to the group under the tarp. She settles on her knees next to the patient. His years are probably greater than his size indicates; he looks no older than six. "When you're on your feet again, I'll teach you how to use a knife," she tells him.

Hook pushes his hair away from his face with a blood-smeared forearm. He nods his thanks to her, pours alcohol on the hands she holds out to him to be cleaned, and passes her the wound retractors.

—

When Wendy returns home in white lace soaked with drying blood, Liza lets out a shriek like she's answered the door to her own death. She hustles Wendy upstairs and into a clean dress before Mary sees and goes into convulsions at the notion her daughter has been set upon by murderers; and she soaks the delicate fabric using all the tricks in her repertoire, but try as she might, she cannot turn it white again.

And Wendy—

Wendy, whose heart has broken open and let him in like she's been jolted with electricity, who took it for granted he would cross the galaxy with them, whose throat feels like it's swelling, cutting off her airflow

—enters her bedroom to find a shadow and a golden light waiting at the window.

—

Dawn is pale yellow and pink. Hook stands near the window in his suspenders and shaves with the assistance of a rust-spotted mirror and a blade that attaches to his prosthetic.

A commotion in the street: a screech of tires, a shout, clattering kid boots on the cobblestones. A bang on the door. Wendy's tousled copper head is framed in the doorway, followed by the rest of her: clad in a traveling coat.

"Peter has found us," she says, winded. "We're leaving now. We're going."

His smile doesn't make it to his eyes, but his voice is warm. "I hope you will all be very happy."

She crosses the room and grips his arm. "Come with us."

His voice is low: "What for?"

"For me. Just for me."

She looks expectant, as though waiting for him to say something, confess something. He keeps his mouth shut. Nothing he can say will make this better for either of them. Better to wonder and wish and dream than be certain and brokenhearted.

He cannot help lifting his hand to touch her face—almost. His fingers pause, then gently brush a curl away from her eyes. He cannot help a quiet: "Stay."

Wendy looks torn. "I'm their mother. I can't abandon them."

"Neither can I."

A voice through the window calls for Wendy: her father, who has chased her from No. 14 to the boarding house square.

Hook says, "Time to go home, Wendy." He drops his hand.

The summons from outside grows louder until it has entered the hall, and the block of sunlight in the doorway shifts to make room for George Darling.

Wendy, her anguished eyes on Hook's, steps back.

And so they part.


	3. Chapter 3

Home!

Wendy has barely landed before she is airborne again, rocketing through the sky with the joy of a thousand colors exploding through her heart.

Streams of sunshine fall generously on the island and set it shining like a gemstone. Neverland pulses with life: yellow fish scales flash in the aquamarine lagoon, lush green fronds unfurl in endless piles of ferns, ripe berries swell and burst in small purple explosions. Crimson birds with orange beaks dart back and forth among the sequoias, chasing after emerald-bright beetles. Wendy revels in all of it: the blinding-white cloud mountains,the cinnamon-red gouges in the pine trees from bucks sharpening their antlers, the towering sunflowers blooming en masse on the hillside below the painted tribal tipis. Not a shade of gray can be found; even the shadows are jade and indigo and umber.

A group welcomes them on the beach: all the boys and Tiger Lily and half the tribe and Wendy's wolf. The boys salute Peter, embrace Wendy, and regard George and Mary Darling with suspicion. Tiger Lily and her people beam at Wendy, incline their heads to Pan, and at the sight of the Darlings fold their arms across their chests and exchange looks with one another. Wendy's wolf bowls her over, keening with happiness. George and Mary find their sons in the crowd and burst into tears.

Peter was not pleased to learn the senior Darlings would be moving to the island, and he can't be blamed for his prejudice; grown-ups don't understand Neverland. But the Darlings are not here for Neverland, they are here for their children. The island knows its guilt, truth be told; Peter collects lost children, and the Darling trio were never lost. They should never have been brought to Neverland and they certainly should not have stayed. If this were not the case, George and Mary’s introduction to their new neighborhood would have verged on hostile. Instead, the island quietly opens its paths and shifts ever so slightly to soften the worst of the blows (John, a pirate king! Michael, a barbarian! Everyone, outdoors enthusiasts!) and at a pace any snail could beat, the newcomers begin to settle in.

To John and Michael, London and their parents are barely distinguishable among the fog of memories they have retained of their childhood. They know what a mother is ('father' is a struggle) and accept Mary as another type of Wendy, though familiarity does not breed enthusiasm; in their minds they have only just got free of mandatory bedtimes and washing-ups. George is an uncategorizable specimen; he cannot wield any sort of weapon, skin an animal, start a fire, or swim, and he is determined to wear shoes at all times.

The senior Darlings live in a bamboo house perched on one of the bluffs beside the lagoon, as promised. They eat boar and blackberries. They sleep on a grass-stuffed mattress. They bathe in pebble-bottomed streams. They sit on chairs made from tree stumps to watch the sunset and wonder aloud if they ought to send for Liza, who is returned to the bosom of her family and bemoaning her fate.

They have none of Neverland's heartlessness. The extent to which they can adapt remains to be seen. It is difficult to imagine the kindness and warmth of Mary Darling giving way to the island's innate brutality. But again, they are outliers here; they are not interested in battles or blood. There is hope for them on all counts.

Their sons are wary of them. It stings, to be so thoroughly unknown, unneeded, unloved by those for whom they would give their lives without hesitation; but this is hardly the first test of their patience.

Wendy is sympathetic. She understands that the London they have left behind is as much a home to them as Neverland is to her, and she knows the strength of love required to pull them away from it. She says as much to her mother, whose forehead creases with a slight frown.

"Yes, but staying or going was never truly in question," Mary tells her. "We wished for you and your brothers to live in London, certainly, but no matter what happened we were always going to be wherever you were. When we understood your brothers were not coming back, and you would not stay under any circumstances, and that our only chance of a life with you was to follow you here—my love, did you ever doubt we would do so?"

Wendy goes out to the cliff that overlooks the ocean beyond the lagoon. The _Jolly Roger_ is anchored beyond the shoals, its grinning colors flying. She stares at it until the sun sinks and stars come out and it is nothing but a shadow on the waves.

Home at last.

—

John says, "Did something happen on the London island?"

Wendy says, "How do you mean?"

"Sometimes you go…" He ponders.

Michael says, "Flat."

"Yes, flat."

"Like you've breathed out and forgot to breathe in." Michael's understanding of the mechanics of human cellular structure is shaky at best, but his knack for description has always been admirable.

"You never did so before."

They have made a driftwood fire on the beach and now sit beneath the black blanket of sky, listening to the night birds and resting their feet on the cool sand. The dried sea salt on the burning wood makes the fire shimmer.

Wendy says, "Do you remember the pirate captain we fought when we first came here?"

They think hard.

"He had a red hand," says Michael.

"No, silver," says John.

"It was a hook. His name was Hook. Do you remember?"

They look uncertain.

"Did he look like Father?" asks Michael.

"Not hardly." She concedes, "He was a grown-up."

John recalls the ticking of a clock. "The crocodile. She got him."

"I thought so too. But he was on the other island. He's alive."

"So?" says Michael.

"Haven't you been listening?" demands John. "This is why she goes flat."

"Because he's alive? Why haven't you killed him, then?"

Wendy has a vision of Michael descending upon London like an angel of death. "I very much want him to stay alive, Michael." She tells them, "He and I spent time together, and we became—friends, and I wanted him to come back with us but he couldn't."

A mental light goes on. "You miss him."

"Why didn't you stay?"

"For starters, it's unbearable there, colors are forbidden, it's all rules, it's dirty and joyless. And someone has to keep watch over you and the boys. And Mother and Father are here now. They want us to be together. And, this is my home. I want to be here."

"But you've gone flat," says Michael.

Wendy throws a stick at the fire and doesn't answer. Her brothers conduct a silent conversation.

"They're not so bad," says John. "Mother and Father. Rather decent, really, the pair of them. We can look after them. Tiger Lily can help us look after Peter."

"And I'll look after John." Michael says, "But don't stay gone too long, yeah? We go flat without you, too."

—

The tent flap swishes and Peter enters. He crouches before Wendy and holds out his hand. Kneeling on his palm is a fairy.

—

Time is a strange thing in Neverland. Sometimes the island likes to speed it up; other times the minutes slow to a trickle.

When the Darling family is reunited in Neverland, the days lengthen. Seconds are stretched into hours. All the time that was lost is given back twofold. This is the island's apology to Mary Darling for keeping her from her children for so long.

Elsewhere, the planets spin madly onward as they always have.

When Wendy comes back he is already in France.

—

_Wendy._

(It's frightfully cold, Wendy, the ache of it spreads from the bones in my hand all the way up my arm. If I didn't have a false hand I think I wouldn't be able to operate at all for the shivering. The nuns are angels and keep a bowl of hot water nearby for me to warm my hand in when my fingers go stiff. These are no conditions to heal in but we can't do much for the men beyond giving them blankets. Most of the wood was burned up months ago. I didn't think this much misery existed in the entire world.)

_Wendy._

Today they brought in a lad who couldn't have been older than fourteen. He looked at me as though he expected me to work a miracle, as though I could put his stomach and intestines back in his abdomen where they belonged and soon enough he'd be running up and down the old country lanes around his family's farm, which is where he should have been instead of bleeding his life out onto a pile of dirty towels.

 _Wendy._ I've been promoted. Henceforth please address me as Surgeon Captain James Hook, 7th London Battalion, Royal Army Medical Corps. Evidently I've proven myself both on and off the battlefield: they let me hide in this makeshift hospital while everyone is dying outside, but when they let me out to collect the fallen I 'perform admirably' in suppressing enemy fire.  
I'm just so terribly good at killing people, Wendy!

(If you think I don't wonder if I ought to have followed you to Neverland, you're wrong. I think about it often, especially on nights like this, when the rain is falling in freezing sheets and my boots are full of frozen mud. I long for it and I long for you. I am always longing for you.)

_Wendy._

Eleven boys died last night, all of them in agony, all of them well before their time. Two of them I'd patched up before, to go back out to fight when they stopped bleeding. One of them knew me from London: he told me I'd set a broken bone in his arm years ago. Then I sawed off that same arm and he bled out on the table. What in God's name made me think it was worth it to save a single life at all? Why did I do it? All I did was save them for this hell.

—

Her first night in No. 14 is awful: silent as a tomb. The next day she stops in Kensington and has a word with the fairies on her way to the War Office.

That evening she opens the front door to two filthy faces peeking out from the depths of brown mufflers, which she puts in John and Michael's old truckles. The following night there are two more.

The night after that there are seven. She opens the attic and hangs hammocks.

Not all stay but many do.

She runs out of money in a month.

—

The lady and gentleman take in the vision of Wendy in stunned silence. In the absence of her parents she has reverted to weaving ivy through her hair and wearing moccasins.

She eyes them critically. "You're his family, then? No wonder he never mentioned you."

They gape, then bristle.

"We won't be blackmailed!" says the gentleman. "If he's gotten you in trouble it's no problem of ours!"

"Of course I'm in trouble. Why else would I be here? He's gone and left behind seventeen little ones and I've no way to feed them!"

"Seventeen?" the lady says faintly.

"There’s nothing to hunt and they don't like to imagine their suppers. And they're all growing out of their shoes and it never mattered before but there's glass in the streets and some of them have a cough that sounds like their ribs have shook loose but it was James who knew what medicines went with what and he's gone. He's gone and I've got to look after them, but I can't, not here."

"Medicines?" says the gentleman.

"And a soup kitchen."

They look bewildered.

"I suggest," says the lady, "we start from the beginning. Tea?"

—

Wendy toils.

She tapes window panes. She stretches milk meant for ten bellies into enough for twenty. She learns which sirens mean she has time to make it home and which mean she needs to find cover immediately. She joins her neighbors in battling building fires. Every day she reads lists of those wounded, killed, missing. She exhausts herself during the day, because otherwise she'll lie awake at night in a paralysis of fear of what might be happening at the front.

The children play hide-and-seek during blackout hours and go foraging for treasure in the sunlight. The war isn't all that different from their daily lives; if anything, zeppelins notwithstanding, it has made them safer, in that they're off the streets at night.

There is never enough of anything: candlelight, wood, blankets, bread. Life was already a fight for survival for most of them, but now the air is tinged with apprehension on top of it. The littlest don't know any better but she can see it in the faces of the older ones.

"Chin up," she tells them. "One day closer to the end."

On a day like any other, his name appears on the list headed _MISSING IN ACTION._

—

"We think he's in a prison camp in Germany. Zwickau," says the clerk at the War Office. He hands her a card with a few typewritten words: the same information she's just been told, no less and no more.

"Send me to Germany, then! I can fight as well as any man and better than most!"

This garners a smattering of sopranic cheers from up and down the corridor.

"Miss Darling," says the clerk. "As we keep telling you: it simply cannot be done."

"Send me as a spy. A nurse. I'll run a soup kitchen, I'll do whatever you want me to do. Just get me over there."

"The best work you can do for England is _here_. On your own soil."

Wendy goes home and makes a list. At its head is the word _Resources_. The first word she writes beneath is

_Smee_

—

A red knit hat sways back and forth back and forth close and far. The sun is hot hot bright white a lurch and a bump and pain all the way through, ribs lungs breathe expand it hurts to breathe it's all the bruises there is blood in his lungs there is blood in his eyes the guards are coming back _the guards are coming back_ Wendy says James cool dark dip and sway night breeze stars so far and small and shouts shouting men shouting turning lurching burning _FIRE_ MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT STOP I'LL DO anything is roses red ones blooming full and bloody red the world is blood the world is red. Give me the gun give me the dirt give me the mud wall give me the shovel radio crackles hiss no one no one will save us no one can save us I want to go home green cliffs yellow edges the mist in the lagoon is rainbows the mermaids will save us the mermaids will drown us the mermaids will kill her she is falling, they have her by the dress they have her by the hair the rifle is loaded _James_ the world is red the lagoon is blood the sky is blue blue blue white

—

Blue eyes open and meet hazel ones.

He stares dully. Uncertainty coils through the flare of gold in her heart. She says, "Do you know who I am?"

"You," he sighs, and the gold surges through her whole body and cascades out of her eyes and fingertips.

Smee says, "And us!"

Hook turns his head toward the other side of the mat. Grouped there are the yet-living members of his old crew, from bo'sun to quartermaster to gunner, all grinning like idiots.

He says, "I'm in hell, then."

Wendy says, "You're in Neverland, in Tiger Lily's camp, in the healer's hut. You've been delirious for the better part of a week. Your fever broke last night and you've been in a very deep sleep since then. How do you feel?"

The pirates crowd around him.

"Right heroes is us, snatched you out of the jaws o' death, fink we deserve us a raise we do—"

"I wonder Cap'n if you wouldn't mind having a look at me froat. Bill says it's nuffink but _I_ fink—"

"And then I draws me daggers and roars like I's a lion from South America, I'll fight every last one of yas! And they skittered away like cockaroachers—"

Hook's eyes are on Wendy.

"We've come close to losing you quite a few times, of late," she tells him, and the gold in her eyes doesn't quite mask the toll recent days have taken. She picks up his hand and presses a kiss to the back of it. He lifts it to run a thumb along the curve of her cheek.

"I love you," he says. Her lips part.

"Doc!" shouts a voice—no, many voices, all childlike and London-accented, clamoring at the entrance to the hut: all the littlest from the No. 14 crowd. Wendy left some with Hook's mother and brought the rest to Mary, whom they already adore. They have been washed and dried and fed to bursting, and now they pour into the hut like rice out of a bag. The pirates swing them up onto their shoulders so that they might add to the chaos.

The clamor of voices is abruptly drowned out by the roar of the tribe's healer, who has appeared in the midst of fur wrappings and misspelled tattoos. He informs them that since they have no respect for the healing arts they are banned from the hut until further notice.

They object, but underestimate the immovable force that is a medicine man in a righteous fury.

"Death Hand is awake and you can be at ease. Now get out. Out!"

With that they are herded, protesting, out of the hut, and the only leave Wendy can take of the convalescent is a look.

—

There is a saying: doctors make the worst patients. Hook does everything in his power to keep this aphorism alive and thriving.

When he knows what he wants to say to Wendy, he bullies his caretakers until they kick him out of the hut. This takes little effort; they have no love for pirates, and have only cared for him out of their regard for Wendy. He hikes up a bluff overlooking the lagoon, whistling to himself as he strides beneath fairy-studded oaks and evergreens. The night is mild and the sky is clear: the stars throw more light across his path than the streetlamps in London ever did.

He finds her on the blufftop. Her arms are hooked around her knees and she is staring up at the sky. He settles onto the ground beside her. A rascal breeze ruffles their hair and subsides.

She says: "If you can find Persephone, I'll tell you her story."

He calls her bluff. "She's not up there. One must be mortal to become a constellation; the stars are a graveyard." He says, "I'd like to hear the story, though."

"Persephone, the goddess of spring, loved her mother. She loved green, living things. Hades, who ruled the land of death, fell in love with Persephone. He took her down into the lightless, lifeless underworld and made her his queen. And after a time she loved him too."

He lets out a long, slow breath.

"So they made sure they were bound to each other forever. But she missed her mother and she missed the warmth of the sun and colors and growing things. So it was decided that she would spend six months in the dark with her husband, ruling over the dead, and six months in the light with her mother, making the world above bloom."

"Poor Hades," says Hook. "It is so limiting to be a king. If he'd been a surgeon, he could have gone home with her for the summer."

Wendy gives a laugh and then a sob. She turns to him; hot tears spill from her eyes, but she is smiling.

He caresses her face with his hand. "Do you think after all that has happened that I have any intention of being separated from you for any length of time?"

"And you won't mind?"

"Will you?"

She shakes her head, happiness shining from her brighter than the stars.

He runs his thumb along her lower lip. "You have a kiss in the corner of your mouth—just—here."

"Yours is in your eyes," she whispers. "I saw it once, when we danced together."

She is as warm as sun on water. Her mouth is the flavor of honeysuckle. His breath is her breath, her blood is his heat. He holds her tightly to him and kisses her with a fervency that she returns in equal measure, until all the worlds are forgotten and their mouths are bruised.

—

Wendy leaves.

And returns.

She waltzes and hunts. She lives in brick and bamboo. She climbs sequoias and plants carrots. She flings herself off clifftops and rides in aeroplanes. She laughs and sings and dances and weeps and bleeds. She runs and flies and falls. She unwraps and unfolds and dissolves and re-knits and gains layers and grows a soul as wide as the sky and a heart as fierce as the sun.

She breathes in and breathes out. She is flat and full.

She is loved. And she loves—loves—

loves.


End file.
